Various commercial and industrial facilities such as hospitals, hotels, motels, factories, and office buildings generally include equipment which use substantial amounts of electrical power such as in the case of hotels or motels; air handling units, ovens swimming pool heaters, lighting facilities, compressors and heating means. Other and like facilities are provided for other commercial and industrial manufacturing facilities.
It is well known that the simultaneous initiation of operation of two or more such devices rapidly increases the overall electrical power requirement of such a facility for the period of time necessary to bring the particular devices being actuated up to operating speed or to the desired temperatures as the case may be.
With the advent of the energy shortage, and even before, electrical utilities have required such users to purchase electrical power at one rate for the average or normal load and pay a penalty for the occurrence of incidences of power consumption above the average, for example the simultaneous activation of two uses. With the advent of energy shortages the penalities for such peak usage have increased rapidly and in most cases represent a substantial portion of the utilities expense of facilities which use significant amounts of electrical power.
Heretofore various devices and methods have been developed to minimize the use of electrical energy. However, such efforts have generally been directed toward reducing the overall normal load consumption by such facilities through the use of more efficient distribution of power, modulation of cooling and heating media provided by such devices, increase in the time rate rise of consumption during the initiation of devices discussed hereinbefore and the development of more efficient monitoring and control systems for the utilization of electrical power.